Gingko (manager of Life in Teacup)

Drinking this tea now, all in my mind is, oh my goodness, anything is possible in this world! Last year, I tried Zealong, a Taiwan style oolong produced in New Zealand (http://gingkobay.blogspot.com/2011/08/taiwan-style-oolong-1-zealong-aromatic.html). My conclusion on Zealong is, if anybody could tell this tea from a high quality high mountain oolong made in Taiwan, that person wouldn’t be me :-p Now I am sipping this Taiwan style oolong made in 2000m mountains of Yunnan, and I am thinking of it again – who could tell this is not from Taiwan? I couldn’t.

Greener style oolong is not my favorite. But a great Taiwan high mountain oolong always makes my heart sing. This tea too, makes my heart sing. It makes me so happy about this sunny afternoon. It makes me so happy about my new egg white little shibo set made by Petr Novak, who has always been great and now is making even smaller teapots!

I have been excited for two days… Guess what?! I’ve restored contact with an old buddy through a networking website! The last time we saw each other was summer 2001. I was terribly guilty for not maintaining the contact. And how grateful I am that after all we haven’t lost each other! Ten years! How many times do we lose contact with good people in our lives? For me, I guess that’s many times. We ride the flowing water of time without even realizing a lot of good friends are out of the sight… How may times do we get back into contact with an old friend whom we haven’t heard from in the past 10 years? I guess that doesn’t happen a lot! But there are people in my life who I know will stay in my life, even if I don’t see them for 10 years.

To honor the friendship, I am having a 2001 CNNP Bulang today, a tea of 10 years, just like the 10 years in which we never heard from each other but never forgot about each other.

Tea from Bulang is excellent for aging and for making shu puerh, because of its rich flavor profile. Shu is not my favorite tea category. But today I feel I appreciate it more than ever. It doesn’t have the charming floral or fruity aroma. Instead, it has the “aroma of age”, which, to me, often means the taste of an old wooden box (let me add “clean”, because it’s dry-aged, ha ha…). Then it gives strikingly sweet aftertaste. In Chinese tea aesthetics, aftertaste is often valued a lot more than the taste a tea gives at the first moment. I feel probably the older I get, the more I appreciate this aesthetic value. In our lives, there are people who don’t give you excitment every day, but with time being, you know those are the people who give you lingering aftertastes.

Puerh is not my favorite tea category. But I always think it’s one of the most unique types of tea. On a day like this, when I think of my buddy, think of my own life 10 years ago, think of how much has been changed by time and how much has not… on a day like this, a pot of aged puerh is exactly what I desire!

My understanding of Shou Mei is very limited. For a long time, I saw it as one of the least expensive tea in white tea genre, and a restaurant tea. A few months ago, I tried a 2005 white peony that was really interesting. This year, when my supplier sent me the new harvest Bai Hao Silver Needle, he said, “Now it’s time to taste last year’s silver needle again – you may find it even better than when it was new.” I will do it soon. But all these made me want to try some old Shou Mei.

So I got this 2009 Shou Mei. In the past, I always brewed Shou Mei the same way as I do with other white tea – small amount of tea, long steep. This time, I decided to use a “hybrid” method between the old brewing and gongfu brewing. I used leaves that filled about 1/5 -1/4 of the gaiwan, and brewed it for 1 minute for each of the first 3 infusions.

My overall impression is, this is the best Shou Mei I’ve ever had. The tea is floral, smooth, sweet, with a little hint of spiciness. Overall I feel it’s not picky at all. Shorter infusion or longer infusion will change the intensity of the flavor and number of infusions the tea can yield, but will not cause problems – as long as very hot water is used and the tea is not under-steeped. My tea started to get weaker in the 4th infusion, but still went a long way after that. I don’t know what will happen if higher leaf/water ratio is used. But I guess if the leaves fill half of the gaiwan, and infusion is controlled to be within 20-30 seconds, the tea will be great and will yield more infusions.

The tea tastes somewhat like Bai Hao Oolong (Oriental Beauty). People who love Oriental Beauty may consider letting their Shou Mei stay around for a couple of years. After all, Shou Mei is so much cheaper than Oriental Beauty!

So, if you have some old silver needle or white peony left in a corner of your tea cabinet (don’t we all have accidentally forgotten teas!), take it out, taste it and let us know what you think of it!

I am very excited about this tea. You don’t bump into a 1996 Xia Guan tuo every year! Besides, this is a product made for Taiwan market, which usually means the leaf materials are more strictly selected. This specific one is said to be made with leaves from 300 year old arbor trees. I don’t have a way to confirm this information. But I can tell the leaves are of very high quality, a quality that’s almost never seen from any Xia Guan product today. Above all, what makes me most excited about this tea is, it’s a sheng that has stayed in purely dry storage in Yunnan in all these years. 16 year old sheng from purely dry storage is extremely rare, because 16 years ago, most people who stored puerh were in Taiwan or Hong Kong, and the storage conditions were much more humid (even without artificial humidification, which was very often used) than Kunming, Yunnan. The dry storage rend started merely 10-15 years ago.

So, you can imagine I was really excited to put my hands on this tea :D

The leaves are beautiful. On my way prying the tea, I still dug out a cotton thread… so far, no stones or straws yet…

The liquor is bright red/orange. The texture of the liquor is smooth and soupy. The front taste is somewhat like shu puerh, minus all post-fermentation taste of shu. What’s most wonderful is its aftertaste, which is like a weak resonance of a typical sheng, bright aromatic, even a little floral, and very sweet. This lingering aftertaste made me elongate the interval between sips and cups, and taste the tea very, very slowly. In between the front taste and aftertaste, I think I’ve tasted something milky and buttery. It’s usually not a feature I find in puerh, either sheng or shu. So possibly it’s just my illusion. But also possibly that’s what the tea mean to be, since I’ve tasted milky flavor from Hei Cha products, which went through post-fermentation as puerh does.

I’ve seen a lot of discussions on dry storage, Hong Kong storage and wet storage. But currently the missing link is dry-stored old sheng – there aren’t many of them. Most Chinese tea drinkers I know don’t like the taste of Hong Kong storage (but in Hong Kong and Guangdong there must be a lot of people loving it). But they don’t have much dry-stored old sheng in hands either. There are a lot of debates about dry storage and Hong Kong storage, because people have to hesitate and struggle between the two options. (Probably also because many people have an urge to feel their rightness. Otherwise why can’t we say all options are good as long as they work for some people.) I believe in future 5-10 years, there will be more dry-stored old sheng available in the market. Once the direct comparison is available to most people, there is no need to debate. You can just choose what you like and store your tea accordingly. Or that’s what I wish. In puerh, people will always find endless subjects to debate on :-p

What’s the best tea? I think it’s a question impossible to answer. But if to answer it in a rather abstract way, I would say, the best tea is never from the market, but from a friend. This tea is from Rich, the blogger of Sharing My Cup of Tea (http://www.myteastories.com/), a connoisseur of tea and especially aged oolong. I have to admit that I am never very enthusiastic about aged oolong, and at one point, I even felt reluctant to talk about aged oolong – somehow, there are often more too many myths and complications. But in my conversations with Rich, I enjoyed discussing with him about aged oolong and learned a lot from him. Besides him being very knowledgeable, what I like most about our discussions is, he seriously studies on the tea and gives (or searches for) reasonable explanations. As a science major, I always like to locate reasons, causes, observations, inferences, causal relations… I believe tea shouldn’t be mysterious. It’s ok not to have a final answer, but it’s not cool to mysterize it.

I feel very privileged to have experienced this tea, first because it’s very rare, and secondly because this is a great opportunity to witness what a Dong Ding was like in early 80s. The current fisted shape of Dong Ding became popular only in 1990s but it entirely replaced the traditional curled shape of Dong Ding. The dry leaves of this 80s Dong Ding are in slightly curled shape, but not ball shape. It has medium oxidation, and medium to heavy roasting. After all these years, the roast taste has become mild and smooth, but the tea has long lasting power. It has a deep aroma and dark honey taste that last about 8-9 infusions. Then I had more infusions the second day. It was hard to say good bye to such a precious tea and I wanted to take out every bit of its taste :D

At the end, what amazed me were the beautiful, spent leaves. I’ve noticed that a common feature of great oolong teas is their leaves look very much alive to the last infusion. It might be a dark roast tea, or a tea aged for many years, like this one. But once fully infused and fully expanded, the leaves look so tender and resilient. I feel very grateful to all the good people who made this tea, who kept it throughout years and who shared it with me!

You can’t imagine how excited I was when finding this Green Chocolate. Finally there is a snack/candy/dessert with high quality, REAL tea as a dominant ingredient. The other dominant ingredient is another one of my favorite – chocolate, with REAL cocoa butter! What’s more, it’s 100% organic. How much greener can it be :D From my first taste of this chocolate to the time I stocked it up for my store, it took less than a week. No matter how their sales record would be, I know I could eat them all even by myself – but of course I am doing my best to battle against obsessive-eating :-p

I feel it will be adored by people who love matcha and white chocolate. The green tea powder used for this chocolate is not at matcha grade, but has a flavor very close to matcha. There are some tiny, tiny bits of green tea leaves too. They are so tiny that they won’t stay between your teeth. But they contribute to the lingering taste of green tea which lasts in the mouth for quite a while.

The Green Chocolate is not similar to the bittersweet dark chocolate type. So dark chocolate lovers may feel it’s not “chocolaty” enough. But if one loves both chocolate and green tea, she may find Green Chocolate a small paradise.

Also for folks who love green tea ice-cream, very likely they will find greater passion in the Green Chocolate. My favorite green tea ice-cream is one made in California and often found in Asian groceries (I can’t recall the brand name but always recognize its box). When I can’t find it, I would go for Trader Joe’s green tea ice-cream. I prefer the other two to the Haagen-Dasz green tea ice-cream, but still like the latter one. There is also a very nice green tea ice-cream made by a new, small ice-cream company in Berkshire County of Massachusetts. But their distribution region so far is still quite small and it’s hard to get it. I’ve also had some green tea ice-cream with large bits of green tea leaves, which I don’t prefer. But usually the taste is quite good too, and just the large bits of tea leaves can be annoying. There is a Baskin-Robinns in Toronto that used to have this kind of green tea ice-cream every Thursday. Inspite of the leaf bits, the ice-cream was quite decent. And I think it’s a nice gesture for them to have a green tea ice-cream day every week. If you are not sure whether you will like Green Chocolate, try some green tea ice-cream first. If you like green tea ice-cream, chances are Green Chocolate will be an upgraded treat for you, less sweetened and with traditionally half-shaded-grown green tea in its most original “tea conditions”.

Typical Japanese green tea has more caffeine than most other teas. For people who are sensitive to caffeine, Green Kiss shouldn’t be taken after 8pm (I tried it and got too caffeinated to sleep till after mid-night). Normally you wouldn’t expect a chocolate to have this much caffeine. But sometimes when I have to get up and go out in early morning, when there is snow storm outside, there is car to dig out of snow and there is a full day of work ahead (all of these happened too much recently!), a small piece of Green Kiss can make me cry out of joy and feel suddenly more energetic.

I taste a lot of samples day in and day out. Most of them I taste alone. I don’t like tasting a tea alone without other drinkers to discuss on it with. It’s nice to drink a tea, write a tasting note, and read other people’s tasting notes on the same tea.

Earlier today I was thinking which tea to drink. Then I saw a nice and interesting tasting not on this Dou Ji sheng puerh.
http://half-dipper.blogspot.com/2011/01/2009-douji-xiangdou.html
Since I have a sample of this tea too, I immediately took it :D

I think I am ok with this tea but will not buy it unless I get another sample to taste again later. It is bitter to some degree, but then has quite prominent sweet aftertaste. The aroma after each sip seems very nice to me. But overall I feel this tea is quite harsh to stomach (I have a relatively weaker stomach).

I am somewhat puzzled by the tea liquor. It does have some smooth, soupy texture. But the tea liquor in my cup is not clear at all, even a little swampy. I don’t know if it’s because I got too many crushed leaves in the sample.

This tea is indeed bitter. I am borderline ok with this bitterness, but I am more tolerant to bitterness than many people. I suspect this bitterness will be too much to enjoy for many people. But considering leaf materials of this tea are from Meng Hai and it’s only 3-year-old, being bitter is not that strange.

This tea is an award-winning product. So far my impression is, its aftertaste is sweet, aromatic, complex and unique. But it’s not my favorite type. This tea serves as a confirmation that I don’t like Meng Hai tea that much, at least not Meng Hai tea that’s still young and bitter. If this tea is aged for several years, and if the bitterness turns into some honey aroma, I imagine the tea can be very nice. This kind of thing happens to puerh sometimes. But I don’t have a clue if it will happen to this tea.

I had a 7g sample, and used all of it in a 130ml teapot. I wish I had used the 150ml one with half-ball shape strainer. This is a strong tea, and when some crushed leaves slowing down the pouring, the tea sometimes got too strong.

The leaves look all very nice, just a lot of them are crushed. It seems that they should be nice whole leaves in the original tea brick and were just crushed in sampling and transportation. If I had had a 10g sample, I would have removed all the smaller bits and brew the relatively intact leaves only. Sometimes it makes a big difference.

It may sound cheap or cheesy to say so… but this tea gave me a feeling of falling in love! So far I’ve only tasted one sample of this tea and have one more for later. But with just one tasting session, I am totally mesmerized!

I’ve been tasting a few dozens of tea samples in the past two weeks, and at certain point I was worried that I was losing my sense and couldn’t recognize what I liked the most. But this tea stood out easily. It’s a very unique tea made from old tree tea leaves from various regions blended. Usually blended puerh is made from plantation tea leaves, and old tree tea leaves are used to make single-estate teas.

Made by a small manufacturer of rising fame, this tea is very elegant and clean (no crumbs left at the bottom of the cup). In my mind, I always saw puerh as a “rougher” tea compared with green tea or oolong. But this one is so carefully made. The elegant outlook, together with its bright, long lasting aromatic taste, makes me feel this tea, in some sense, somewhat feels like a dan cong. I still don’t know why I feel this way!

I think I am completely in love with this tea and hence with the manufacturer too. I have only one sample left, but I think I will get a lot of it soon and will keep watching on any new products from this manufacturer. If I have to give up all the other puerh in the world and only have this tea as my puerh, it would be fine and I wouldn’t feel sad. That’s how much I love this tea :D

I put it under puerh category, but there are people who don’t believe it should be called a puerh.

This tea looks like a very scary tea to me! Whether it looks scary to you may depend on which photo I show to you :-p The one I uploaded to the database is a scary one, especially if looked enlarged. I will upload more photos on my blog later.

I’ve had a refined version of this tea earlier. The refined version has lots of "golden flowers (yellow fungal growth, which is believed to be beneficial to health, unlike the yellow fungi found in rotten nuts, which is a carcinogen). The fungal look is not scary to me but rather attractive.

This tea brick looks scary to me because it has the most choppy, dry, old and stemmy leaves I’ve ever seen from any tea or tea bricks. But as far as I know, this tea is consumed by many people in northwestern China, and this brand is one of the most famous. So however scary it may look, I know it’s supposed to be drinkable.

I brewed about 3 grams of this tea in a 130ml teapot, first for about 2 minutes, with some left over hot water (probably 190F). The liquor is of yellowish color. The taste is by far not as scary as the appearance of tea leaves. It tastes sweet and woody. Then I brewed it with newly boiled water for a long time (probably 10 minutes) and got a darker, red tea liquor that looked closer to what the tea color is “supposed” to be (as northwestern people who drink this tea on daily basis would boil this tea in water for many minutes and then mix it with milk or butter). The tea tasted stronger this way, but not as strong as many other puerh or non-puerh teas. And it didn’t give more than a few infusions this way.

The dark, red tea liquor looked even to some degree quite pretty and bright. The taste is earthy type of woody. I think some people would like it (if they are not freaked out by the leaves to begin with). People who don’t like earthy flavor may not like it.

When brewed in a pot or cup, this tea has many stems floating on the surface of tea water. In fact, I estimate this tea has about 20% stems in it!

But still, if skipping the scenes and offered only the tea liquor, I think probably most people would even like it, or at least don’t dislike it. It’s not a bad tea. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been the daily tea of many people in northwestern China.

On the other hand, I do like the refined version of this tea much much better, and somewhat believe maybe more traditional drinkers of this tea would prefer the refined version too. In the refined version, there are mainly tea leaves and almost no stems, and tea leaves are of higher grade (not as old, dry or choppy).

But overall, I have very limited experience with this tea and what I’ve had may not be a best representative. One thing missing from the brick I have is the “golden flower” – the yellow fungus that has been traditional seen as a major criterion to evaluation quality of a Fu Zhuan. Without “golden flower”, this tea tastes ok. But maybe it could taste better with some fungal growth :-0

I’ve sent this tea to my Tibetan friend for a few times. But this is the first time I’ve ever opened the wrap myself. I felt it funny that I was brewing this nomad’s tea in a tiny yixing teapot. So I ended my tea session with this tea in a bigger glass with some milk added. This tea is pretty good with milk!

I am not a big fan of Shu, but oddly sometimes this tea serves me so well, such as on a cold winter night!

This tea has nice bright dark red tea liquor. The taste is smooth with a soupy texture, feels very clean, no offensive over-fermentation taste at all. It’s after taste is not only sweet, but also somewhat more complicated (in a nice way) than most shu I’ve tried. No wonder it’s seen by a lot of people as a classic product of shu.

If I have to critique on it, I would say its taste is on the weaker side. But very possibly many flavors of shu that’s favored by a lot of other people just escape my radar. The tea is very soothing, with great mouth feel and excellent warming effect. It really made every skin pore of mine feel comfortable!

A friend of mine commented that he feels this tea doesn’t taste much different from its 2008 version, which seems to me may not be a bad thing at all.

Viewers’ discretion is necessary!

“Wrestling of dragon and tiger” is a traditional way of tea drinking among some ethnic groups of Yunnan. It’s not 100% puerh (and sometimes black tea is used instead). It’s a mixture of liquor and puerh. I’ve read about it in quite a few books but have never seen it’s practiced. So I did mine based on guestimation :-p

In my nutrition knowledge, it may be very unhealthy to take alcohol and caffeine together, when both are in large doses. But with large amount of one and small amount of the other, it seems ok. That’s why Irish coffee with Bailey is supposed to be ok, but nobody would put a shot of rum in a shot of espresso.

I made my “wrestling” drink tonight, because it has been cold and I thought some brandy and some shu puerh may boost up some warmth. Too bad I only have a cheap ginger flavored brandy, which is supposed to be my “flu medication” (learned of it from my Irish neighbor!). But I used it anyway, along with my shu puerh left over from yesterday. I used a 150ml tea bowl, poured in 1/5 bowl of ginger brandy, and filled the bowl with hot, hot puerh. Every book talking about the “wrestling” drink stresses that it’s important to add tea into liquor, not liquor into tea.

The light drunk feeling came before the taste of tea. When made a warm drink, everybody should cut off half of the amount of alcohol that she usually feels comfortable with. Besides, I did get peanuts and chocolates right next to me, in case I would feel the drink burning my stomach lining (luckily it didn’t). The steam of alcohol rushed through the throat as well as the nose. Then the taste of tea kicked in and lingered around. That’s the way to get both tea drunk and alcohol drunk with just one bowl :-D

It’s not something with gourmet tasting. However, the warming effect is amazing. Next time, I would use even less liquor (when it’s steamed up in high temperature, it’s strong!) and stronger tea (instead of left over tea). Not something you should have too much or too often. But it does give you quite some kick, and yet so much healthier than a regular liquor shot :D

Ever since I saw the name “Wrestling of Dragon and Tiger”, I have been memorized by this drink. I hope someday I will have it by the fireplace of a Yunnan native. Before that, I will try to make some of my own :D

I dug it out from a big pile of samples, and haven’t figured out who gave it to me :-p

But, wow, this is Nan Mei Village! The tea is from 2009, but to my surprise, it barely has any bitterness and has only very slight astringency which disappears instantly. There is a smooth, sugary taste that brings me some warm feeling. Normally I am very reluctant to have a sheng younger than 3 years because I constantly feel it would make me feel cold (probably from the harsh taste, the stimulation to stomach and something hard to explain). But I am totally comfortable with this one. I may get a bunch and still wait for another few years before drinking it up, just for the sake of metal comfort :-p

I got a generous sample of probably 10g. I put all of it in a 150 teapot, used boiling water and about 10-15 second for the first several infusions. I didn’t pay much attention to the dry leaves. But then, surprised by the nice taste, I peeped in the teapot and took a look at the leaves. They are very beautiful!

I have heard of Nan Mei Village for a few times and this is the first time I’ve tasted some tea from there. I have a special love to Bing Dao tea. It usually has very clear and refreshing aroma as well as a nice sugary taste. Nan Mei Village is very close to Bing Dao, and many people say some Bing Dao tea is actually from Nan Mei Village because their tastes are somewhat similar. But a tea labeled as Nan Mei tea is much less expensive than a tea labeled as Bing Dao tea.

From now on, both Bing Dao and Nan Mei are sweet names on my list of Sheng! This 2009 Nan Mei tea is probably the tastiest new Sheng I’ve ever had. I am actually not sure at all if such a smooth Sheng has any potential for aging of longer than 10 years. I doubt you can have both ends. But I think it’s already great if it tastes great NOW!

I am always in pursuit of new tea, out of curiosity. My curiosity is big, and sometimes it can be weird :-p When my friend told me about this cheap Phoenix Oolong, without hesitation, I said I would try it. At 22 yuan per 500g ($3.3 per 500g, or 19 cent per oz.), it’s probably the cheapest oolong I’ve ever had. So I took all the trouble to obtain 2 samples and include them in my international shipping parcel, all the way from Chaozhou to Massachusetts. I thought, I’ve got to experience the 19 cent per oz. oolong!

To my surprise, the dry leaves are not bad at all. Besides some extra twigs, there aren’t many hint of cheapness (but of course my eyes are not as sharp as those of oolong farmers). The dry tea smells pleasant, a light aroma remotely resemble low-grade but presentable jasmine green tea.

I first infused it with typical gong fu style, with about 7g tea leaves in a 120ml teapot and with infusions as short as possible. The tea tastes bitter and astringent to certain degree, but not unbearable (I do have strong tolerance of bitterness, though). Both the bitterness and the astringency hit the tongue and fade away. There is no lingering fragrance at all. The smell of the tea is all the way weak but pleasant. I feel I can’t really take this tea in gulps because it’s indeed harsh in some way. But on the other hand, if there is only this tea in the world for me to drink every day, I wouldn’t feel as desperate as if there were only some brand name teabags left in the world for me to drink every day. With the seduction of my other more tasty teas, I didn’t go for more than 2 infusions in my gong fu style brewing of this tea. But still I think this tea is drinkable, more so than some teas I’ve seen from Asian groceries and mainstream supermarkets.

I also tried brewing smaller amount of this tea in a mug. It’s less bitter or astringent than in gong fu brewing. Again it reminds me of some low-grade jasmine green tea, not great but drinkable, even with some aroma. Then I cold brewed some of this tea. In cold brewing, as I’ve found in some other teas too, the bitterness and astringency are largely reduced, probably because such tastes do not dissolve into water in lower temperature.

Overall it’s an interesting experience, and I am glad this cheapest oolong I’ve ever had didn’t make me suffer too much. A bonus of this tea journey – the producer obviously doesn’t want me to think this tea is a typical representative of their teas (in fact it’s their cheapest tea), so they gave me samples of their most expensive Huang Zhi Xiang (the same tea tree variety but a “pure breed”) and their intermediate-range Huang Zhi Xiang. I love freebies and they justified my expedited international shipping :D

No notes yet.

Among all the tea categories, puerh Shu is probably the one that I like the least. I occasionally enjoy shu, but had never felt the “magic” as I would find in some other teas. After trying some older shu that everybody else adores but I feel at the most neutral, I’ve kind of settled with the few inexpensive products that I can get along with, and I haven’t been trying a lot of new products recently. Generally my take of shu as a “restaurant tea”, “milk tea” and “tonic drink” may have largely held me back from exploring it as a gourmet tea.

Now here is another shu that’s supposed to be “really, really good”, according to some friends. I wondered if it would taste good to me.

This brick is in a paper box without any information about the production date, which is not uncommon for puerh products before 2005. I got the production date from the supplier, whom I 100% trust. But in general, I believe for products like this one, people should always taste a sample before buying a whole brick or cake. Inside the layer is a thin layer of paper wrap, which I had to tear into pieces to get the brick out. The brick is made with Grade 8 leaves, which are larger and older leaves with some stems. Although it was the first time I had pried off flakes of leaves from the brick, I already got a small stone slightly larger than peanut size, which of course is nothing extraordinary for a puerh brick. :-p

I used a 150ml purple clay teapot for this tea. Although the teapot is indeed suitable for Shu, the real reason I used it is that I thought the teapot was already “soiled” by other shu products I had before. So you know my general attitude toward Shu. :-p I used tea leaves of the size of a oreo cookie and had the first several infusions as short as possible (approximately 10 seconds).

Now I want to say this is my favorite Shu so far. But please notice that this conclusion is from someone who doesn’t have much experience with lots of good and expensive Shu (many of them are so rare and legendary that I can’t manage to have them). One the other hand, I would recommend this tea to people who like black tea and dark oolong but don’t like Shu, because this may be the “likeable” Shu.

I like this tea first of all because it doesn’t have a hint of over-fermented (Wo Dui) taste. Nor does it have the un-offensive but rather hollow taste I often find from a Shu. Secondly, I was glad to have got some kicks from this tea. (To me, “kicks” means prominent aftertaste, especially a taste rising to nasal cavity and back of the throat.) Besides it has all the nice characters of a shu and yields many soupy and sweet infusions.

This is why I really love this tea. Would I call it a gourmet tea? Yes and no. Yes because it tastes great and it’s rare. No because look at those leaves! It’s typical of a puerh brick to have coarse leaves. After all, originally puerh brick is supposed to be enjoyed by nomads and boiled on campfire. Its charm is not elegance but unruliness. For us modern geeks, nomad life is an intriguing fantasy. Next time after my lamb chop meal, I am going to enjoy this tea and dream of the life on the prairie! :D

Usually a puerh comes with a wrap with its title and brand name. This one has a white paper wrap, that’s all. The inner label bears the tea factories name and a short name (Horse Caravan Tribute Cake). It’s made with Jing Mai tea leaves.

The leaves are very nice looking. At the beginning, I felt the taste was not as strong as what I had expected. But the taste is stable and long lasting. I guess it can be a great introduction cake for people who love greener oolong but are new to puerh. The tea has very pleasant aroma and almost floral aftertaste. The aftertaste is not as prominent as my favorite Meng Ku Bing Dao, but it’s also quite long lasting.

I like this tea very much. It has only a touch of bitterness and a remote feeling of astringency, both turned into moist sweetness in a second. The tea liquor feels very friendly and tasty.

Generally I tend to not believe all the puerh is the older, the better. But I don’t have the experience to predict the future of a tea either. There is a saying that some currently elegant and tasty puerh may not get more and more brilliant when being aged. This is the kind of tea that makes my hesitate, since it’s so nice, should I save some for the future, or enjoy it now and not expect much from its future?

I am recently in a puerh sheng mood, which doesn’t happen often. So I would grab the chance and taste a few more sheng products :D

This tea is supposed to be one of the routine, decent products of Da Yi. It’s from 2007, which was not a great year for puerh, but not the worst year either. The tea is pretty good, that’s if you are like me and don’t mind bitterness to a small degree. I think this tea is reasonably bitter, and by reasonably, I mean the bitterness is not long-lasting. It hits the inner part of the tongue and disappears fairly quickly. The aftertaste is very nice. It’s the aftertaste that make you feel the mouth is very cool and clean. There is a little bit of astringency and a hint of smokiness.

The leaves are not very chopped, but not the whole leaves either.

I made about 8-9 infusions of it, and pushed the brewing pretty much to an end. It’s not a very strong sheng among the teas I’ve tried recently.

I’ve sadly found I’ve got a little bit of allergy recently. A friend of mine used to say, if you live in Northeast and don’t have a season allergy yet, don’t think that you are spared and it may start any year! Now I think I’ve got it :-S but just a little bit. Probably that’s why I crave for sheng puerh recently. It did help a lot. Probably just drinking that much of water would help anyway, but only with tea, I can patiently drink so much water!

I got it as a manufacturer sample. It’s early spring tea of Keemun cultivar made into spiral shape (similar to the shape of Bi Luo Chun green tea). The specific processing method was invented in 1997 and the product has been sold well in Japanese and Korean market. It’s rather expensive for a black tea. I’ve been curious about what’s in it.

The dry tea leaves look very delicate, with golden tips on the little black leaf buds. The aroma of dry leaves is very pleasant, almost floral. It’s an aroma that is found more on green tea than black tea.

I used a glass mug to brew the tea, with newly boiled water but had it sit in the mug for a few minutes before throwing in tea leaves. The sample is 4g leaves, a little more than I usually use in a mug. I hesitated for a second and threw all the 4 grams in the mug. Sometimes this is how I made a cup of tea too strong and regret for it. But luckily this tea turned out fine.

The first infusion turned out ruby color liquor typical of keemun. The aroma is very keemun too, even better than keemun, I think. But the flavor, in my opinion, was just ok and didn’t match up to its fantastic aroma and beautiful leaf shape. It was very pleasant sugary flavor and left the mouth soothed and moist. But I didn’t find as long lasting aromatic aftertaste as in my favorite keemun black tea. Could it be that the spring tea leaves are too subtle to have such aromatic aftertaste? The flavor was very stable in the first 3 infusions, which I think, is very outstanding for a black tea. I had totally 6 infusions or so out of this tea. Another great characteristic of this tea is that it seems very tolerant of long infusion and also performs well even if too many tea leaves are used in the brewing. It’s a tea that won’t go wrong. Just because of this feature and its beautiful leaves, I can see it must be adored by many people. I enjoyed every sip of this tea, but have decided that for the same price I would rather buy other teas. I guess it’s mainly because great aftertaste of a tea is quite important to me. But people who love its unique flavor may find it irreplaceable.

What I’ve found a little weird about myself is, when a tea doesn’t meet my expectation to a full degree, I could feel no disappointment, but even a bit released. It’s more of a release when you naturally stay out of love with an expensive tea. Life is short. Too many teas, too little time to drink. With one less tea to love, a tea drinker may stay less crazy. Ha!

It’s great that steepster system allows you to categorize a tea as both black and green, which this tea is.

I put more photos on my blog:
http://gingkobay.blogspot.com/2010/05/ban-na-sunset.html

I heard of the idea from a friend – it’s a popular way of drinking tea among Yunnan people (which part of Yunnan, he doesn’t know though. Yunnan is so large and diverse!).

Step 1, brew Yunnan green as usual. This time I used a Yunnan roast green (the one that was made on January 1, 2010). The original version is using Yunnan sun-dried green though. I don’t have any of it, but puerh young sheng is basically the same thing, just it’s hard to get a young sheng with beautiful leaves. Next time I will try using the Guan Zi Zai Yi Wu, which has the most beautiful leaves I’ve seen from a puerh cake.

Step 2, enjoy the first 3 infusions as usual. But for this, I refilled the mug every time when the tea liquor was about half of the cup volume. This is partially because I wanted to keep the strength of the tea, partially because I did use too much leaves. Yunnan green is strong!

Step 3, at the end of the 3rd infusion, when there is about 1/4 volume of the liquor left (I assumed 1/4 was better than 1/3 because the more newly added hot water, the better the tea would be infused), add in Yunnan red (black) tea.

Step 4, refill the mug with hot water.

That is it. Then you can re-infuse on and on. This lasted a whole afternoon for me. Eventually the leaves expanded a lot and there is relatively small space for accessible tea liquor. I guess, this is a tea enjoyed by people who drink a lot of tea and don’t have much time to take care of their tea brewing. In other words, this is a tea for real workers to gulp, not for Gongfu drinkers to take sip after sip. So for such a purpose, this mug is too small.

The first infusion after adding red tea was a bit astringent. But I didn’t mind at all. Yunnan people would say if a tea is “bitter without biting your mouth and astringent without sticking to your tongue”, then it’s a good tea. I kind of agree. The astringency instantly became sweet aftertaste. Then later in the many infusions, the tea became smooth and remained flavorful.

Supposedly, Yunnan sun-dried green (such as a young sheng) is even stronger than roast green. So next time when I have a whole day of work, I will start the day with some Yi Wu leaves in a big mug and add in some Yunnan red tea later on. It can be a good companion without much attention required.

I put the tasting notes on my blog and there are more photos:
http://gingkobay.blogspot.com/2010/04/meng-ding-snow-bud-xue-ya.html

Let me say first that I do love this tea very much. I will describe all the great features of this tea first, and then tell a little about my mixed feelings about this tea.

Mount Meng is one of the most famous tea mountain in China with probably the longest culture history. In ancient time, people believed “brewing Meng Ding (top of Mt. Meng) tea with water from the center of Yangzi River” is the highest level of tea enjoyment. The harvest standard of Snow Bud on top of Mt. Meng is, when there are only 5% of the tea bushes start budding. It takes about 80,000 tea leaf buds to make roughly 500g of the final tea product. A skillful tea harvest worker may well spend half a day to get just enough tea leaf buds to make 100g final tea product.

Dry tea leaves – they should actually be called tea buds!

I’ve just realized that I had been anal about NOT using a scale. Although I use a scale to weigh tea all the time for other people, I never knew the exact amount of tea I used in each cup! So today I thought I would just use a scale, at least once :-D It turned out I used 2.5g leaves. It’s about just right amount for me. So I think up to 3g tea in a mug will be ok. More than 3g will make the mug too crowded with tea leaves.

I used the middle-throw method (中投法）as described in the post about Long Jing.

I am obsessive about the view of tea leaves in water!

The taste: light vegetal, with sweet aftertaste. It feels clean and moist in mouth, and the tea radiates some cool feeling even in hot water.

This is first yellow tea we’ve ever carried. Yellow tea was developed from green tea technique. After the tea is heated (in this case, pan-fried) to have the enzymes killed), the tea is allowed further oxidation with optimal temperature and humidity. Therefore, oxidation in yellow tea is different from oxidation in black tea or oolong. In yellow tea, the oxidation is not catalyzed by the tea’s own enzymes, but triggered by outside environment factors such as temperature and humidity.

Here comes my mixed feelings.

Oxidation of this tea is very light. If we compare this tea and another Meng Ding Snow Bud I had last year, the differences are big, although both teas are great. The other tea has larger buds, and deeper oxidation, and therefore more typical sweet taste of a yellow tea.

Currently in China, Green Tea still dominates. A direct outcome is, many other teas are green-tea-ized. The most popular Tie Guan Yin is made to be very green. And many yellow tea products is made very green.

Recently I discussed with a friend who has dealt with yellow tea for many years. In his opinion, it’s not possible to make Meng Ding Snow Bud into typical yellow tea with deeper oxidation, because the buds are so young and tender. On the other hand, the other Meng Ding Snow Bud I had last year (which I loved very much), in his opinion, is more typical yellow tea, but should be called Meng Ding Yellow Bud (Huang Ya) instead of Snow Bud, because the buds are larger than the standards of Snow Bud. So here is the trade-off, you may choose the precious Snow Bud, but it can’t have the typical oxidation level of a yellow tea. On the other hand, the bonus is, if we forget about the yellow tea, and compare this tea with a green tea, the price of this tea is much more friendly than a first-harvest green tea with comparable youth and tenderness.

I hesitate to call this tea yellow tea, because, as you can see, from leaves to liquor, it’s all green! I hesitate to call it green tea either, because it does intend to be a yellow tea, and it does have some nice sweet aftertaste of yellow tea. I guess it’s not my own dilemma and it’s shared by many tea people.

Actually I am drinking a Panyang and a Keemun side by side. Sometimes drinking two teas at the same time confuses me and l lose track which flavor is from which tea, especially when the aftertastes are complicated. But this time, I’ve found it quite interesting to have these two teas together.

These are two tea samples I got. Keemun is my favorite red (black) tea and the “Keemun aroma” has become my benchmark for red teas. When reading Steepster tealogs about Panyang, I’ve seen many good comments and a few comments like “uninteresting”. I guess, if I had had this Panyang by itself, I would have felt it a bit uninteresting. But interestingly, in the contrast with Keemun, which I actually like more, I appreciate Panyang more. This Panyang doesn’t have as prominent aroma as Keemun, but it has some mild character, as mild as rice soup. Besides, there is a hint of fruit aroma (just a hint though).

I used two small gaiwan (of about 100ml) to brew this two teas. Each gaiwan had its bottom just covered by dry tea leaves. I used boiling water, and refill the cup when there is about 1/3 liquor left. I’ve notice that the mild feature of this Panyang makes it more forgiving. When I drink toward near the bottom of the gaiwan, the Keemun gets more condensed, with even some sourness. But Panyang is still mild and pleasant. I guess, this means, when you brew this two teas, the Panyang is tolerant of various brewing parameters, while Keemun is pickier and can’t be made too concentrated.

In the third infusion, Keemun still smells and tastes aromatic, but Panyang is almost exhausted in both fragrance and flavor (but still, the rice soup taste isn’t bad). However, this comparison cannot be generalized to the two tea varieties, because I am sure there are greater Panyang out there.

Besides, I have to say, Hokkienese is mysterious! The same word is pronounced as Gongfu in Mandarin, and pronounced as Congou in Hokkienese, yet they are both Chinese dialects!

I put the tasting notes of this tea on my blog here with some more photos:
http://gingkobay.blogspot.com/2010/04/semi-wild-pre-qingming-huang-shan-mao.html

But I ended up writing super long paragraphs about tea-related thoughts. So here is a shorter version, sticking to the tea itself :-D

In my opinion, the greatest difference between semi-wild tea and regular tea is richer flavor. For green tea, early spring is the best season (and the only season for many products). The earlier the harvest, the more refreshing flavor a tea has. Then in later harvests, flavor becomes heavier, but meantime, some bitter, astringent side tastes may build up too. The semi-wild tea has the pure taste of early spring, but it has richer flavor than other teas harvested at the same time.

I always use a glass to brew Huang Shan Mao Feng. Can’t miss the view of tea dance! (Most of my photos are poorly taken. But probably from the photos you can tell how much I love this tea :-D)

I love it when the leaves all “stand up” in the water like many little trees.

When most leaves sink to the bottom, the tea is ready for drinking. If you gently blow the water surface, you can “drive” away the suspending leaves. Many people would prefer using a gaiwan, to avoid any fight with the leaves. When using a gaiwan, I believe it’s a good idea to leave the lid OFF most of the time.

I think I’ve got to get a glass gaiwan for green teas!

he tea has a light green bean / edema-me aroma. The first infusion doesn’t feel as strong as some other teas. But the first 3-4 infusions are very consistent in flavor, and the refreshing aroma doesn’t get weaker. As a thrifty-minded person, I re-infused this tea for many times. To other tea drinkers, I would recommend at least 5 infusions. This tea lasts more infusions than most other green teas I’ve seen.

To me, this is the most exciting time of Spring!

Haha! It’s not purchased. I made it! More photos are here:
http://gingkobay.blogspot.com/2010/04/first-tasting-of-my-home-made-tea.html

So, I made some tea grapefruits in the past December and January. Here is a post about them!
http://gingkobay.blogspot.com/2009/12/made-my-own-tea-grapefuit.html

I am a super clumsy person, so I was really excited that I can MAKE something.

Although these are supposed to be aged for years, I thought I should open some and monitor the change of tea from time to time. So here is the first tasting that I did yesterday.

Before I receive my hand-made organic cotton paper from Yunnan, I would use regular napkin tissue paper to wrap them.

This is one of the first ones I made last December, when I was still struggling with sewing. I picked a relatively ugly one to open first. Most of those made later were slightly prettier. The label means 2009, December 2. So far I tried 3 types of tea. “B” is what I used the most. It’s a 2006 Taiwan Wuyi. It’s a relatively inexpensive tea, and currently I can get as much as I want. Besides, I’ve found it to be very mellow and its flavor mixes well with herbal drinks. So I thought probably it would be suitable for tea grapefruits.

raditionally the tea citrus is made with puerh (in Guangdong and Yunnan) or oolong (especially Fo Shou Oolong in Fujian and Southeastern Asia). But so far I don’t like shu puerh as much as most other teas, and I feel good sheng puerh could be a bit expensive to fill grapefruits – even for cheap Xia Guan tuo, you know, its future is EXPENSIVE!) So my current choice is this Taiwan Wuyi. I would like to try more teas when I feel more sure with this.

It smells good! Chinese like aging orange and tangerine peels. The aged peels are used in cooking and as herbal medicine. From outside, the tea grapefruit smells pretty much like aged peels.

When put side by side, the tea from the grapefruit (on the left) looks the same as regular Taiwan Wuyi. But it smells of slight aged peel aroma.

Same amount of tea in two same gaiwan (but I forgot to take photos of the gainwans). I guess this is 3-4 grams of tea in a 100ml gaiwan. After an instant warm-up rinse with boiling water, I made the first infusion as what I usually do with most oolong, Interestingly, the tea from grapefruit (on the left) yield slightly darker liquor. The two teas are same tea of the same age. But possibly the one was oxidized more with the moisture (and maybe biochemical contents as well?) in the grapefruit. The tastes of the two cups were very different. The tea from grapefruit tasted a lot brighter and complex, while the regular Taiwan Wuyi tasted darker and mellower.

Throughout the entire time, the smells of wet tea and gaiwan lids were very different. The regular tea smelt more regular, but the grapefruit aged tea smelt of some light citrus notes.

For the second infusion, I let both teas infused for 1 minute, so that any differences would be more enlarged. This time, the grapefruit peel flavor in the tea on the left is more prominent. At one moment, I thought the bright fruity flavor was really nice. But at another moment, I thought the grapefruit peel flavor was still too “raw”, with some astringency in it.

When making aged peels, the citrus peels used should be aged for at least three years to let all “raw” taste in the peel convert to a woody, deep aroma. In modern Chinese food industry, when they make “aged peel” snacks, although there is no 3-year aging, they would boil the peels and infuse them with syrup or honey to remove the rawness. If you bite on an orange peel, you will know what I mean. Raw orange peel, although tastes fresh, bears some astringency and spiciness that are not so pleasant. When the tea was aged in the grapefruit, it didn’t get too much of the astringency, but still, I think more time is needed to let the peel’s flavor convert to be more “ripe”. Overall, I am glad that the flavor seems all “logic” to me and it’s developing in the right direction!

For the third infusion, I let both teas infused for 3 minutes. This time, both teas tasted even stronger. Still, the regular Taiwan Wuyi tasted very mellow, with sugary mouth feeling typical of Taiwan roasted oolong. The grapefruit aged tea seemed to be sending a lot of different flavor signals to the tongue. I had difficulty to describe what flavors it exactly had. For some reason, the complicated flavor made me believe this tea is very healthy (I don’t know why, but probably to me, slight bitterness, astringency and overall orange peel flavor all indicate healthiness). By this time, my husband (who is generally not a tea drinker) came over and I let him taste the two teas. His response was, the grapefruit aged tea was a little astringent but tasted more interesting, with some floral notes (however I don’t think his floral notes are the typical Taiwan high mountain oolong’s floral notes).

Overall, a problem I’ve found about tasting two teas side by side is, I can’t be sure how much time to leave between sips from the two different cups. On one hand, I thought they should be tasted one immediately next to the other, and that’s all the purpose of tasting two teas side by side. On the other hand, many teas have great aftertaste and mouth feeling, which sometimes last many minutes (even hours when it comes to some sheng puerh) after each sip. This Taiwan Wuyi doesn’t have as complicated layers of flavors as some other oolongs, but it has great aftertaste. It usually leaves the mouth and tongue feel sweet and cool. Now when I tasted the two Taiwan Wuyi together, there was no way for me to determine what kind of lingering aroma was from which tea.

The opened grapefruit was tied up, and the tea will be tasted again after the summer. I can’t decide yet wether to send some to my mother now or laster when it’s more aged. But I somewhat feel she will like this tea!

When it comes to Tie Guan Yin, I usually prefer charcoal roast and traditional style. But this one impressed me from the beginning. It is only a Grade 2, which well explains the standards of this tea factory. Later it turned out I fell in love with many of their products.

Modern green style Tie Guan Yin is featured with lighter oxidation, greener dry leaves and more prominent floral/vegetal fragrance. It is closer to green tea than most other oolong products. My observation is, people who love green tea accept modern green style Tie Guan Yin very well. Many people who love Japanese green tea seem to find something they like in modern green style Tie Guan Yin.

Personally, I like modern green style to certain degree, usually appreciate the fragrance, but sometimes feel like to escape when the grassy flavor dominates. I even like grassy flavor when it’s not very strong. But when it gets overwhelming, I can’t take it anymore.

Today, for the first time, I tried brewing this tea in a mug. I was a little worried about the grassy flavor. Normally I use gongfu method to brew this tea, with only 20-30 seconds for each infusion. I wasn’t sure if a lot of grassy flavor would be extracted if the tea were left in a mug for many minutes.

I used about 20-25 grains of dry tea leaves, brewed in a glass mug. I paid price for my laziness. There was some lukewarm water from last night, and I just used it. It turned out too cold for brewing tea, probably only 60C or 140F. The first infusion was merely water taste. But then, starting from the second infusion, the flavor came out nicely. The tea didn’t taste grassy at all, probably because it’s not as strong as in gongfu style. When brewed in mug, the tea tastes very much like a fragrant green tea, with some sugary, metallic flavor that seems typical oolong characteristics.

Overall the flavor is on the light side, but should be strong enough for people who like green tea. Next time, I should definitely use hotter water!

While drinking this tea, I finished the first DRAMA in my life! No, I am not a writer, but merely a lousy student of ENG 200. I’ve been writing craps all this time, choppy, dull pieces that I wish my classmates never know who wrote them. But anyway, I could never imagine writing a DRAMA! Although I’ve been writing junk every day in the past two months, now writing a big chunk, complete piece of structured junk seems worth celebration with a cup of tea! :-D